Ways to improve your blog while watching Netflix

March 12, 2016

We’ve all been there. You have a spot of spare time. You feel like you owe this spare time to blogging. Your blog is looking neglected and is has stray hairs growing out of weird areas that you haven’t yet got around to plucking. The blogger guilt is setting in.

This is all fine and dandy, except you also really want to watch that thing on Netflix so that you know what everyone on Facebook is going on about. Because: the memes. You’re up to your tits in funny memes and you don’t understand any of them. Clearly writing new posts is out. Reading other people’s posts and commenting is out. Those things take up too much of your attention. Photographing stuff is out. That means getting off the couch.

You need a blog activity that will only take up half of your concentration span so that you can keep one eye on the telly yet still feel like you achieved something tonight. You want to head to bed later with the knowledge that your blog is somewhat better, but still feeling relaxed, replenished and down with the kids. I’m here to help. These are the things that I do when the urge hits to multitask. Frankly if I could figure out a way to help my blog while playing iPhone apps my life would be made, but until then this will have to do.

1 – Make sure your http and www go to the same place

So many blogs don’t do this and it annoys the tits off me. Basically, your blog is http://www.mybitchinblog.com, right? Well, does http://mybitchinblog.com also lead people to your blog? If not, set up a redirect so that it does. I tell you, the number of times I’ve typed a blog into the URL bar (thinking I’m being clever and saving time by avoiding Google) and been taken to that stupid Go Daddy page and let out a snort of repressed rage.

There are all sorts of valid SEO reasons to set up the redirect, but you primarily want to do it to avoid angering me. Thanks.

2 – Run a link check and fix that shit

Broken links are a sign of a broken blog, where the posts run wild, lacking boundaries and a sense of belonging. You don’t want the authorities stepping in and taking your blog away from you, do you? Putting your blog in the foster system, getting a better, more capable blogger to care for it? No, you don’t want that.

Go to brokenlinkcheck, find all your broken links and then fix that shit. You’ll make all those people trawling through your archives and finding your old posts on Google so much happier. It’s also a pretty mindless tasks that is actually enhanced by a bit of Netflix action.

3 – Run a spell check and fix that shit

Similar to the above point, there are also many sites that will do a scan of your blog and tell you where all your spelling errors are hidden. Like this one. Or this one. Because frankly, who the hell has time to do a proper edit at the time of posting? Not this bunny rabbit. These tools won’t pick up your grammatical errors, but they go a long way to fixing your shit.